Thursday, August 20, 2015

Bullets (aka micro-rants)

There are a number of sites I've stopped reading, not because they make me angry or, god forbid, "triggered," but that their performative outrage is so predictable to the point of intellectual laziness.

Another big feminist site where I was a sometime member has been, in the past year or so, pared down to a handful of commenters after several dust-ups because, hey, women sometimes disagree with each other. That modern feminism is tied to victimhood isn't a valid critique anymore, or, at least, by anyone wanting to be taken seriously by feminists. I stopped linking my blog there, which has brought my blog traffic way down. (I assume. I don't really check stats these days anyway.) I miss the community, but I refuse to fall in ideological lockstep.

One problem I have in particular, at least by my own observation, is compared to most of its commentariat, a complete lack of faith in institutions. A lot of it comes from my working-class background -- it's hard to put faith in a system that not only doesn't work for but tells you your trash -- but most of it is just me I guess. Questioning psychiatry, for example, doesn't make one "anti-science," nor does considering home birth an option. I don't know when the latter became anti-feminist, either.

I found two short stories on my aging hard drive that I'd all but forgotten about that deserve a second look. One is an obvious Margaret Atwood rip-off (I write like confirms this, by the way), and the other is a result of my trying desperately to be a "punk rock" writing in the vein of Dennis Cooper or something where everything is fucks and cocks and drugs. Oh my. In every writing shop I've attended, there was a woman, older, born-again, offended by everything. I wrote for her. Or rather, I wrote to scare her. I haven't set foot in a classroom in ten years. I wonder who I'd be writing to scare off today?